The Palacio Spínola is the grandest of Teguise's surviving colonial-era houses, built in stages from the late seventeenth century onward by a Genoese merchant family who grew rich on the trade between Lanzarote and the Spanish mainland. The two-storey building is arranged around a small inner courtyard with a wooden gallery, traditional in the Canary Islands; the stonework around the doors and windows is in the dark local basalt that gives the village its distinctive look.
The palace now houses the Casa-Museo del Timple, a museum devoted to the Canarian timple — a small five-string instrument that is the islands' national instrument. The collection includes historic instruments, photos and recordings of leading players, and the workshop tools of local luthiers. Even if you have no interest in folk music, the house itself is worth the modest entry fee for the views into the courtyard and the chance to see how a wealthy Lanzarote family lived three hundred years ago.